Anons have been looking at this all wrong. If we were not in NATO tomorrow, would our defense budget be less? Not really. we would basically have the same stuff, just not forward deployed. Could we lose money? Yes. Currently they buy a lot of our weapons systems because of commonality, we force them a little and we make the best stuff. It would probably cost us more for the ships, etc. that we would need to deploy from the US.
In the past, NATO led the Democrats around by the nose ring. With Trump, it is the other way around. Still more to do there though.
Anons have been looking at this all wrong. If we were not in NATO tomorrow, would our defense budget be less? Not really. we would basically have the same stuff, just not forward deployed. Could we lose money? Yes. Currently they buy a lot of our weapons systems because of commonality, we force them a little and we make the best stuff. It would probably cost us more for the ships, etc. that we would need to deploy from the US.
In the past, NATO led the Democrats around by the nose ring. With Trump, it is the other way around. Still more to do there though.